Facilitating Scientific Insight with Sunfall

• November 19, 2008: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
• Location: 3110 Etcheverry Hall, UC Berkeley Campus

Cecilia Aragon [Staff Scientist, LBNL]

Part of the CITRIS Research Exchange at UC Berkeley. As always, these talks are free and broadcast live online at mms://media.citris.berkeley.edu/webcast, and questions can be sent via Yahoo IM to username: citrisevents. The complete schedule for the fall semester is online at RE-Fall2008. Sponsored by Infineon Technologies.

 

Abstract:
Many of today's important scientific breakthroughs are made by large, interdisciplinary collaborations of scientists working in geographically distributed locations, producing and collecting vast and complex datasets. These large-scale science projects require software tools that support, not only insight into complex data, but collaborative science discovery.

 

In this talk, I discuss some of the issues to consider when developing such software tools, and describe Sunfall, a collaborative visual analytics system developed for the Nearby Supernova Factory, an international astrophysics experiment and the largest data volume supernova search currently in operation. Sunfall utilizes novel interactive visualization and analysis techniques to facilitate deeper scientific insight into complex, noisy, high-dimensional, high-volume, time-critical data.  The system combines novel image processing algorithms, statistical analysis, and machine learning with highly interactive visual interfaces to enable collaborative, user-driven scientific exploration of supernova image and spectral data. 

 

Bio:
Dr. Cecilia Aragon is a Staff Scientist with the Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  Her research interests include visualization and analytics of large scientific data sets, computer supported cooperative work with applications to scientific collaborations, and human-computer interaction. Aragon received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley and her B.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology.  Prior to holding her current appointment, she was a computer scientist at NASA Ames Research Center for nine years, and before that, the founder and CEO of Top Flight Aviation.